Chest type for assembler output. What do you use and why?

[Ormy]

I just use Passive Provider Chests and limiting the available slots to 1 to avoid overproducing items. Returned items go to my central storage area with filtered slots.

It is not worth it to make it academic.

...

And buffer chests should only be used exactly for what they were designed... buffering items further away.

This is what I do too. Its simple and it works.

I also use active provider chests in 2 specific situations. 1.) Any assemblers emptying fluid barrels output the empty barrels into an active provider chest. 2.) Nuclear reactors output used up fuel cells into active provider chests.

[Serenity]

The red belts in the buffer will only be available for player and construction requests; they won't be available to the logistic network as a whole (e.g. other buffers, requesters without the box checked). That's the problem with using buffers to double as recycle and output.

That's perfectly fine in many situations. Nothing else uses red belts.

I don't use buffer chests everywhere. Mostly in the mall/make everything area. Those are products that don't have to go to many places. And when stocking a building train for example I can set a a requester to take from buffer chests.

There may some situations where that doesn't work. Like wall supply directly from the mall. But in that case chests can be changed

[rcp27]

I also use active provider chests in 2 specific situations. 1.) Any assemblers emptying fluid barrels output the empty barrels into an active provider chest. 2.) Nuclear reactors output used up fuel cells into active provider chests.

The other place I use them is for emptying trash collection cars on “service” trains that run as needed to outposts to build or deconstruct them.

[Asm_nh]

Mall/utility or anything that isn't in constant high demand:

For vanilla it's usually passive provider, with recycling done with a requester set by circuit condition (central green circuit web across entire mall for "needed" amount + arithmetic combinator to filter out only required signal for that chest), works great in fully robotic mall where you can have trash train station with circuit controlled filter inserters unloading all the trash to be sorted out. Storage chest option for marathon playthrough - getting to lategame science packs from when you get early bots would take quite a lot of time, and you want to recycle early in order to save on resources/assembling capabilities as much as possible.

For modded (Angels/Bobs, Seablock) I tend to almost always go with filtered Storage chest + circuit limited inserter - main advantage being ability to set it up as soon as you have red circuits and bots technology, and with higher tier science packs being quite fun to set up it allows me to start setting up mall and recycling system quite early, without having to deal with recycling thousands of inserters and belts later on when I finally get to pre-rocket stage and have more dire needs for all the resources.

In general, I'd say it depends a lot on when you want to set up recycling and how permanent you want this iteration of utility assembler setup to be - setting up fully robotic mall module with supply train after you've got logistics system research will be very different from setting early mall with ability to properly deal with logistics slots and base construction/deconstruction orders.

High throughput or high demand stuff (bot based modules etc): active provider on assembler output, bunch of buffer chests next to train stations, requesters inserting into steel chests (circuited so every train gets loaded as fast as possible) as train station loading - it's to minimize loading time in any case a queue of trains will form up to take the product to other places, by buffering up output as close to loading/usage point as possible.

[vedrit]

As has been said before, I use buffer chests only for things like belts and inserters, where "basic" models are used throughout the factory and eventually used to make an upgraded form (Yellow belts -> red belt, basic inserter -> fast inserter)
Everywhere else, passive provider (when connecting to network) or some regular box and/or belt (for short-range transport or for trains)